David McElroy

I felt angry, but more than anything, I felt powerless.

All I was trying to do was set up an account with a new company that my suburb had contracted to pick up our trash. The service provider has changed several times in the 11 years I’ve lived in my house. I normally just start getting a bill from a different company, but it didn’t work that way this time.

The new provider was a large national company. I saw its new trash containers show up for all of my neighbors, but mine never came. When I called the company, I was told that my phone number matched a local address that I’d never heard of. The only choice I was offered was to pay the bill for that address.

When I called from my office phone, I was sent straight to voicemail and nobody ever called back. When I called the city to ask for help, I was told to call the company. There was nothing they could do.

There is no local office for the company — and nobody would return my calls.

I went for months without trash pickup. Nothing changed until a different company took over the contract. I now have trash pickup again. It feels like a huge win that they’ll at least take my money.

This entire mess is just one tiny incident in a growing collection of ways in which I feel I’ve lost control of my life — in big ways and tiny ways — to faceless companies, indifferent bureaucrats and bored gatekeepers.

These people have more and more power over my life. I’m feeling powerless.

And I’m angry about it.

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I did something radical last night. I turned my iPhone off.

I haven’t slept without my phone turned on and within easy reach since I got my first iPhone — in June 2007. I activate its “do not disturb” mode every night. But every time I wake up for a few minutes — or longer — I’m checking for notifications and messages and emails and whatever else I can find.

For almost 20 years, I’ve slept next to a small mobile computer that has ruled my life. 

At 3:30 a.m. — Sunday night, Monday morning — I was trying to get to sleep and having little luck. I had been in bed for almost two hours. I had too much on my mind that I was going to do Monday. I kept thinking about the people who might call, the text messages I might have waiting and a dozen other things that could be waiting for me each time I woke up.

Suddenly, I rebelled against this electronic tether to the outside world. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to wonder what notifications might be waiting for me.

I hesitated. The idea of shutting it off felt wrong. But I finally reached over and slid the control to turn off the phone.

For the first time in years, I felt free. Just a little bit.

And then I slept peacefully.

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I still can’t get accustomed to taking midnight walks by myself.

For almost 10 years, Lucy was my constant companion for these meandering walks that let us explore our neighborhood and the downtown area of the suburb where I live.

When I’ve walked those streets for the last nine months, I’ve left the leash at home — and I left it at home tonight. I walk silently down streets where the loudest noises come from the crickets all around me. I hear no heavy panting. I hear no sound of a dog’s nails on the pavement. I see no eyes looking up to me as though to ask where we’re exploring next.

And it feels inconceivable that my friend Lucy is gone.

It’s not just me, though. Other people notice. About six weeks after Lucy died, a stranger who lives a few blocks away stopped me when I was walking earlier in the evening. I was taking a short walk along the route that Lucy had taken most often when I heard someone call out to me from a porch.

It was an older woman who I don’t know. She asked about my dog and I explained that I had lost Lucy six weeks before. She said she had been watching us walk for years and had missed us lately, so she feared something might be wrong.

Then she broke down and cried.

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